It had been nearly two months since Bruce had last saw the raven-haired beauty named Kagome Higurashi. He had looked into her mysterious boyfriend, Rue Takashi. It turned out he was the sole survivor of his father, Katsu Takashi. The Takashi clan was one of the five noble families of Japan, which might have something to do with why all of Bruce's searches for anything else on Rue were turning up fruitless. Bruce sighed and murmured to himself, "Why do things always have to be done with force nowadays?"

-DKS-

Batman slammed the thug's head on the hood of the car again. "Tell me what you know about Rue Takashi!" His voice was low and gravelly now, to prevent anyone from having a chance of figuring out his true identity. There was a loud popping sound as the man's shoulder popped out of joint.

Normally, Bruce was never this rough with thugs. Sure a broken finger or cracked rib was inevitable sometimes, but a man has a reputation to look after. It didn't help that most of the press called him a criminal as it was. "I swear man, I don't know nothing! Even if I did, Rue would kill me if I told ya anything! Please just let me go, I ain't done nothing wrong!"

"All I'm asking for is one name, and I'll forget about that bag of dope in your saddle bag on that bike. Or would you rather it be trashed to?"

"Please man, not the bike! That's the only thing I have in my name right now."

"Then give me a name that can tell me more about Rue Takashi!" Batman's voice was booming with bass now. He was quickly losing patience with this man. He held the man down to the hood of car with one gloved hand while the other grabbed a finger and slowly bent it back. "I'll start breaking each finger until I get a name. And when I run out fingers, I'll trash your bike. Now give me a damn name!"

Batman slowly bent back the thug's index finger until it a sickening crack was heard. "Damn! I'm not telling you anything. Sidney would kill me if-"The thug stopped mid-sentence, realizing a second too late that he had said far too much. The dark knight lifted the pressure off of the man's neck.

He was preparing to bolt when Bruce leaned down close and whispered, "Sidney who?" He groaned.

-DKS-

Kagome sat at the large window in their luxurious hotel room. She gazed out past the valet parking and the vast stretch of designer brand stores, past the crumbling buildings, past even the city limits. She gazed simply at, nothing. All she was able to think about were her parting words with Bruce Wayne.

"My fiancé, Rue… He's a ringleader."

"Uh?" He didn't understand what she was talking about.

"And one day… Bang! I'll be gone, just like that." She smiled as the dawn of realization sank into his head. "Oh! I should be getting back. Bye."

She smiled once again at his flabbergasted expression when she first told him about her fiancé. Then, her smile disappeared when she realized just how furious Rue would be if he ever found that she had been 'flirting' with another man. He seemed to be getting more irritable easier these days. "Must be a big deal about to go down," Kagome thought.

There was a loud knocking at the door. "I have it," Kagome shouted as she walked to the door.

"Where the hell is Rue at Kagome?" A battered man stood at the door. His left arm was in a sling, two fingers in casts, broke nose, and he had a large shiner.

"He's in the office, but it wouldn't be smart to, ouch, you could watch wear you're going asshole!" She watched the man walk briskly into Rue's office without even knocking. Even when her fiancé wasn't shouting at her, Kagome still couldn't help but cringe, as she was doing now.

She scooted closer to the door so she could listen in. The man recounted the time he was with Batman. "I swear Rue; I didn't tell him anything about the big deal going down next weekend. He just took the dope out of my bag and burned it."

"Okay good job," Rue said, lighting a cigarette.

"But, Sidney's name did slip." Rue's cigarette fell in the ash tray, stirring a small cloud of ashes. "I'm sorry boss, he broke my finger and all I said was that Sidney would kill me if I told him anything. Boss, please don't kill me."

"Unfortunately for Sidney, he won't have the honor of killing you. That belongs to me," Rue said as he pulled out a silver Berretta nine-millimeter. The shot rang out clearly, but in Gotham that was common these days. Rue picked back up his cigarette and pulled a drag off of it. "Seems like the Bat has decided to get involved in our affairs. That might change up things a bit." Rue tapped the ashes off onto his dead thug's face. "Well, might as well call someone up to clean this mess before it sets into the carpet."

Kagome got up and went into the bathroom before her fiancé left his office. She was breathing hard at the sudden overload of information. The water that was swimming behind her eyes threatened to spill as she remembered the gunshot's clear echo. But, as much as she hated it, maybe Bruce would come and save her from her own doings.

-DKS-

Bruce was quickly growing tired of having to go through various rings of small fry dope-heads to try and just get to Sydney. Not only was it troublesome, but most of the time, they didn't even remember who they were. But finally, he hit gold.

"Look here, I've spent all night trying to find you, and now, you're going to tell me everything you know about Rue." Batman said with a threatening edge to his voice.

A short, pudgy man wearing a white suit with a matching fedora backed up against the wall behind him. He had a small and trim goatee surrounding the lips that had just curled around an illegal Cuban cigar. "If I were to tell you everything I know about Rue, and you didn't kill me, then Rue would. So, either way it goes, I'm screwed. So, go ahead and break all of my limbs or whatever it is you vigilantes do nowadays. I don't care because like I said, I'm screwed either ways." He took a long drag off of the blunt and blew it out in Batman's face.

Batman picked up Sydney and slammed him into the wall while holding onto his collars. "You think Rue knows how to make people suffer. Don't. Make. Me. Laugh. I have a black belt in virtually every type of martial arts. Rue only knows temporary pain. Me, I can hit you in a specific nerve and you will suffer for the next ten years even after a doctor looks at it. I can make you bleed from any open spot on your body if I so chose to Sydney and that includes the eyes, nostrils, and ears. Do you really want to go through all of that?"

A momentary glint of fear flashed through Sydney's beady green eyes before he said, "Well, if it's bad as you're making it sound, then maybe I will just a bullet to the head from myself or Rue."

Batman latched his forefinger in the webbing of Sydney's thumb and forefinger. "Talk," he said as he slowly added more and more pressure to the point. The much smaller man groaned but he didn't say anything. "Well, since you don't want to talk, let's make it a little more permanent ." Batman then placed his hand over Sydney's lower jaw and slowly began to twist. "Don't you dare think for one moment I won't rip your mandible off. It might do the world a favor if I did."

The smaller man wrapped his pudgy hands around Batman's wrist and tried to pull his hand off, but it was to no avail. "I'll talk!"

Batman released most of the pressure off of Sydney's lower jaw, "What was that?"

"I said, 'I'll talk'!"

Batman pushed the smaller man backwards, and Sydney fell butt first into a puddle of mud. He was rubbing his jaw when suddenly a dark shadow enveloped him. "You said you'll talk so let's hear it."

"Rue Takashi, he's one of the world's biggest suppliers in dope, more specifically heroin and marijuana, but I'm sure you know that. The only reason he's in Gotham right now is because he's the number one supplier. Normally, he just sends me or his bodyguard, I believe the guy's name is Cloud or something like that, but someone has been selling out on him, and he wanted to get his hands a little dirt on this job.

"Anyway, he's staying in The Tribeca Grand Hotel, on the other side of town. His room number is 102. I swear man, if he finds out I told you anything, he's gonna kill me."

Batman's voice was low and gravelly again. "Tell me more about this big deal."

"I've already told you more than enough to get everyone in this town killed." Batman's hand was wrapped around Sydney's jowls again. "Okay!" The pressure was immediately gone again. "Rue is planning on expanding his grounds in illegal drugs. He's planning on killing another drug lord here. His name is Sephiroth Jenova. He has a large meth lab in some warehouse in a shadier part of town. Town talk has been saying that he heard about the boss coming here, so he started upping his security where even a snake couldn't slither in without being shot at least fifteen times.

"But, like I was saying, Rue is planning on killing Jenova, and making himself the number one supplier in all of North America, and possibly the whole Western Hemisphere. He has ties everywhere in the world, and if you take him down, you're going to have a bounty on your head that could buy a palace anywhere in the world. Why do you want to take Rue down so badly all of a sudden? You've had to have known about him for some time now, since he is, well was before Jenova came along, the number supplier for dope."

"Well now, I have an even bigger reason for wanting that kind of scum out. If his ties in the drug business are as numerous as you're making him sound, then by taking him out I'm going to be doing this city a favor."

Sydney finally got up and started brushing some of the mud off of his butt, and then picked up his fedora and placed it back on his head. ""Well, you know what hotel Rue is staying in and where at, so why don't you go ahead and nail him now? Get this whole fiasco over with."

"No, I'm going to trail Rue for a while, wait for the deal to go down so I can take out both him and this Sephiroth. Do you have a profile I could go on to know what I'm looking for, and don't make break any bones for this information. I'm already sick of you as it is."

There was a glint of fear that had come in Sydney's eyes when Batman had spoke of waiting for the deal to go down, but it had long ago been replaced by a steel glint of hatred. The smaller man spoke, "You want be able to miss him." Sydney looked down, " He has long silver hair, teal colored eyes, and he's a little over six foot tall. He's a type of guy you don't want to fuck with man. He doesn't mind getting his hands dirty at all. He keeps some long sword around, and he likes to chop people down with it. I mean, this guy can cut through anybody without getting a drop of blood on himself."

The short man looked up, but the Dark Knight was gone. Sydney looked around at all the rooftops, sure that Batman was looking down at him, watching. "You know what Batman, fuck you! I hope you burn in hell!" Sydney looked down and scowled at the stain that was sure to set in on his bottom. His scowled deepened for a moment, but then he sat down beside the mud hole. He reached on the inside of his coat and pulled out a rectangular silver case that had inscribed on the side, 'To Sydney, the Only Man I've Ever Loved'. Sydney scoffed at the present from his boss, but pulled another cigar out of the case, and slowly began to smoke it, reveling in the toxins he was putting in his body.

After he had finished his cigar, Sydney pulled out his gun, a Ruger .357 magnum. He looked at it for a moment, admiring the intricate designs that were etched throughout the barrel and on the stock of his gun. The next thing Sydney knew, he tasted the cold steel of the barrel, and then he saw a bright light before his life faded out.

-DKS-

Batman put down his binoculars after watching Rue for about an hour. This was the worst part of his job, Bruce determined. The late nights that he put into reconnaissance. He then saw the woman that he was doing all of this for. He breathed her name, letting the taste of it sit on his tongue for a moment before grappling off of the rooftop and leaving.

-DKS-

A man wearing a leather jacket, a pair of faded blue jeans, and a baseball cap turned backwards is walking down the street that has Rue's hotel on it. He is sniffing the air, and looking around a bit. Other than the sniffing, you would have looked over this man in a heartbeat, assuming he is just another person walking down the street until you look down, and you notice he isn't wearing any shoes. Then, you would probably remember you're living in a city of freaks and this man is just another one of the reasons you're saving up money to leave town.

You have no real reason to remember a man of this sort of stature, about 6'1", maybe 6'2", but if you look into his eyes, you would remember those, because eyes like that are rare. This man's eyes are the color of melted amber, and you can tell that they aren't contact lenses. If anybody was to ask you how you know this, you would just simply shrug with the simple answer of, I just do. Something else that you can tell about this man is that he is some form of ex-military from the arrogant swagger in his walk. From under the ball cap, we see that he has shoulder length silver hair.

This man has now stopped by a wall and props up against it, reaching into the inside of his jacket pocket and pulls a battered pack of cigarettes out. He has just lit it up when a policeman comes up beside him, sniffing the smoke and asking for identification. The officer tries pronouncing the man's name, but has far too much difficulty with it, so the snuffs the cigarette out on the side of the wall and exhales the smoke. "The name is Inuyasha Taisho."